Happy Chinese New Year!!

We had our CNY dinner last night. Yesterday, Ohio was hit with a big snowstorm and all of the company that we had invited had to back out. That was ultimately okay with us, for two reasons 1) we didn't want anyone we know and love out on those treacherous roads and 2) it left more egg rolls for us.


Yeah we made egg rolls from scratch again this year and they were fabulous. I use a recipe I found in Everyday Food Magazine and they are quite tasty. After that I made us a big batch of steak and shrimp stir-fry. For dessert Ev and I had made sugar cookies (to substitute for Moon Cakes) and we also made tiny bits of pink fudge called Fairy Fudge. Needless to say, I ate so much that I was in pain. It was a fine dinner though.


The house is all decked out for CNY too. We re-used most of the stuff we made last year and just added some Ox stuff in. Leslie does all of the original drawings and I am the colorist. One thing I added this year was a small grouping of Lantern Riddles on a kitchen wall. I know that really we just have used markers and construction paper so it's not that we have especially "nice" decorations but we made them all together and we had fun while doing it, so to me that's far better than ordering stuff online and putting it up. Plus Bean gets to see us looking things up in books and trying our hand at Chinese calligraphy and reading up on the Zodiac.

So, the year of the Ox? That's my year!Hopefully it will be a good one.



The mantle wall- complete with small Buddha shrine( that's a picture that I took while we were in China getting The Bean) and Bean's calligraphy from last year.

One of Leslie's Oxen. The calligraphy down the right side is the numbers for the lunar year 4707

The Lantern Riddles

Scrum-diddly-umptious egg rolls. Made with Napa cabbage, carrots, ginger, garlic, pork and then they have a bit of a soy, brown sugar and rice vinegar sauce too.


My two favorite people, they were waiting for the oil to heat to fry the egg rolls and they were making each other laugh.

The Ox that Bean drew.